Every American has a stake in a major anti-trust lawsuit to stop billionaire and Paramount/Skydance owner Larry Ellison from taking over Warner Bros. Discovery.
Twelve state attorneys general have sued on antitrust grounds to block the merger, which would result in a massive media consolidation, unlike any in recent history.
The $110 billion merger would capture roughly 210 million global subscribers, ranking it second in the world only to Netflix.
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The merger would unite two of Hollywood’s historic “Big Five” studios and consolidates massive intellectual property, including major franchises, such as DC comics movies, “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Star Trek,” and “Mission: Impossible.’
It would also own the largest share of television viewing hours, surpassing all competitors across cable, broadcast, and streaming, and gain control of CNN.
Paramount’s chief legal officer said yesterday (July 12) that selling CNN is “on the table” to resolve the antitrust lawsuit.
The real concern is Ellison himself, a hard-right Trump supporter and staunch advocate of Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has used his media holdings to advance his political causes.
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After gaining control of CBS News through an $8 billion Skydance acquisition of Paramount Global, he made radical changes to its programming and paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview.
Most legal experts said the suit was easily winnable, but the settlement allegedly helped gain Trump administration merger approval.
Ellison hired conservative journalist Bari Weiss, to head CBS News, and she engineered a wholesale righward shift of flagship program “60 Minutes.” She fired veteran journalists, hired conservative and pro-Israel staffers and killed broadcasts considered critical of Trump.
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The media mogul’s willingness to bend over for Trump extends to Israel and its controversial Prime Minister.
Ellison has transferred tens of millions of dollars to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), including a record-breaking $16.6 million single donation, and he’s frequently hosted Netanyahu at his private Hawaiian estate.
Politically, Ellison has become one of the most spendthrift players in the MAGA movement and donated tens of millions of dollars to Republican Super PACs.
He poured $45 million into a pro-Trump political nonprofit during the 2024 election cycle, and has enjoyed direct access to the president. His ties with Trump are so deep, he’s often descrdibed as a “shadow president,” with influence over federal artificial intelligence policies.
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Oracle has since won massive government cloud-computing contracts. He co-founded the company in the 1970s, and it’s the source of his vast wealth, estimated to be as much as $203 billion, making him the world’s sixth-richest person.
Ellison led a consortium of investors to buy out TikTok’s U.S. assets from a Chinese company that was declared a national security risk, and Trump backed Oracle to host and secure TikTok’s U.S. user data and algorithms.
The state attorneys general coalition, led by California and New York, filed the lawsuit in July in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District in California.
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They allege the merger violates Section 7 of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act by severely limiting entertainment industry competition. The lawsuit argues the combined company would control up to one-third of the market for wide-release theatrical film distribution, blockbuster films, and basic cable television channel licensing.
The effective oligopoly could lead to limit content options, fewer new movie releases, and drive up prices, not to mention s flood of right-wing productions.
Conservative outlets, such as Fox Corp. (owner of Fox News), Newsmax Media (owner of Newsmax TV), The Daily Wire, Blaze Media, and Sinclair Broadcast Group, alongside holding companies like News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post, already dominate the media landscape.
Just one of the right-wing companies, Sinclair, owns and operates, or provides services to, 178 television stations across 79 U.S. markets, and regularly forces outlets to run canned political segments.
In court, the coalition won a key victory in late July when federal Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted a temporary stay of the merger. Paramount and Warner Bros. have since stipulated to the delay until a final court ruling, or until June 1, 2027.
In a fit of pique, Ellison told senior executives he will begin relocating company operations outside California, starting Oct. 1, if the lawsuit is still live by Sept 30, according to trade rag Variety.
That same date triggers $7 million per day in ticking fees owed to WBD shareholders as long as the deal remains unresolved.
The twin disclosures come as Paramount faces a hard deadline. David Ellison told senior executives he will begin relocating company operations from California on Oct. 1 if the lawsuit is still pending on Sept. 30, Variety reported.
That same date triggers $7 million per day in ticking fees owed to WBD shareholders until the deal closes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to David Ellison on Wednesday accusing him of “colluding” with Trump.
David, the son of Larry Ellison, argued that the lawsuit is designed not to protect competition but to block him from owning CNN, specifically.
In the latest development, Barry Diller donned his armor and rode in as a white knight at The Wall Street Journal’s “Future of Everything Festival,” offering to buy the cable news network.
“Absolutely, I would do it tonight and tomorrow night,” he said. “Before they ruin it any further. Hopefully, before it’s extinct, which, I mean, it’s not gonna be.”
Diller said CNN is “so ripe” for innovation and suggested more investment in its on-air programming, according to The Journal.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”